A senior US senator has warned Ugandan General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is also the son of President Yoweri Museveni, had crossed a red line which would negatively affect diplomatic ties between the two countries.
The Republican chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, said General Muhoozi did not follow diplomatic protocol to apologise to the US over human rights violations during Uganda's disputed 2026 General Election.
“Commander @mkainerugaba has crossed a red line, and now the US must re-evaluate its security partnership, which includes sanctions, and military cooperation with Uganda. The President's son, and likely successor, cannot just delete tweets and issue hollow apologies. The US will not tolerate this level of instability and recklessness when American personnel, US interests, and innocent lives in the region are at stake,” Senator Risch said in his X account.
The Electoral Commission declared President Yoweri Museveni the winner of the January 15 elections, granting him a seventh term and extending his rule beyond 40 years.
Senator Risch dismissed the vote as illegitimate, saying it served only to entrench Museveni’s hold on power. He described the election as a hollow exercise, staged to legitimise President Yoweri Museveni’s seventh term and four decades in power.
The senator compared Uganda’s election to Tanzania’s recent vote, but said Uganda’s situation raised greater concern because of its close security ties with the United States.
Shortly after Senator Risch's announcement, General Muhoozi announced taking a social media break after being active for more than 11 years.
“Let it be known that after almost 11 years on Twitter/X and after amassing over 1.2 million followers, I intend to reduce my interactions here. I'm going back to fasting and praying for my country. With God's help I hope to write my autobiography,” said General Muhoozi on X.
General Muhoozi sparked international outrage in his socials after the election, including the announcement of the suspension of all cooperation between the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) and the United States of America embassy in Kampala.
He also made a series of posts, which he has since retracted, where he claimed, among others, that security forces had killed 22 opposition “terrorists” and suggested Bobi Wine should be next.
“We have killed 22 NUP terrorists since last week. I’m praying the 23rd is Kabobi,” he wrote using a derogatory nickname for the opposition leader.
In another post, he gave Bobi Wine a 48-hour ultimatum to surrender to police, warning that failure to do so would see him treated as an “outlaw/rebel.”
This photo, posted by the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, shows an armed military officer standing over Bobi Wine's wife, Barbie Kyagulanyi, during a January 23 night military raid at his home in Magere, Wakiso District.
General Muhoozi also vowed to eliminate the National Unity Platform (NUP) from Uganda’s political landscape, claiming divine authority for the threat.
He later issued an apology and reaffirmed that bilateral ties remain intact, claiming he had been misinformed when he accused the United States of supporting opposition leader Mr Kyagulanyi, who has remained in hiding since the disputed January 15 presidential election.
“I want to apologise to our great friends, the United States, for my earlier tweets that I have now deleted [and] I was being fed with wrong information,” Muhoozi wrote.
“I have spoken with the US Ambassador to our country, and everything is okay. We are going to continue our military cooperation as usual.”
